Microsoft plans to automatically push Internet Explorer 7 to Windows XP users when the browser update is ready later this year. IE 7 will be delivered in the fourth quarter as a 'high priority' update via Automatic Updates in Windows XP, Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of IE product management, said in an interview Tuesday.

Overnight ? The name says it all: Windows 2000 ... we're now almost at 2007, and seven years in the computing world is an eternity. Windows support itself has lasted for time enough in my opinion, and has been told to disappear time ago, so call it whatever you want except overnight. I'd like to see such kind of support in several free software projects, and particulary in some GNU/Linux distributions.

"When Internet Explorer establishes a persistent HTTP connection with a Web server (by using Connection: Keep-Alive headers), Internet Explorer reuses the same TCP/IP socket that was used to receive the initial request until the socket is idle for one minute. "

They see Firefox is gaining momentum every day, so it doesn't matter if IE7 it's safer or faster or does your laundry; they have pulled a new interface (Oh!) from their asses, so people can now say "look, it's the new IE". They think IE7 will stop Firefox, and probably it will. Until people realises it's the same sh*t.

While that may be true..make no mistake, Microsoft has only done the most bare minimum to update their product to something that resembles a modern web browser. And unlike the rest of the computing world, they get to just sit back, click a button and instantly have 80% of the world running it. Interestingly there are people that think there is nothing wrong with this...

I couldn't agree more, MS's problem is that they've never been in the heat of competition. I think however with the rise of competition and people like the EU making them play fair the quality of their products will either improve or Microsoft will fall to competition.

I dont care about CSS I dont care about transparent PNG rendering. IE 7 is offering only one more feature than Maxthon on IE 6 and that is that anti phishing stuff. I dont like IE 7. And i wont use it. With Maxthon so far I am enjoying the Internet the way it should be. As far as I am concerned, IE 7 is offering me nothing new or useful. But that is me...but I am sure there are people who agree with my opinion. This is just Microsoft shoving software down your throat as the parent message suggested.

Your opinion. There is no right and wrong in this matter besides that Maxthon is offering all that I will need at the moment and so if Firefox. So why upgrade? How big is the download for IE 7? How big is the download for Maxthon? All of that taken in to consideration, alternatives to IE 7 win hands down.

Actually you should be worried. Maxthon uses the IE6 rendering engine. IF they have made changes to the API etc your favourite browser may break!

Also users of web browsers hardly worry about CSS, PNG etc.... however web developers DO CARE and can create better, smaller, prettier and more robust sites with these technologies. Based on the way Maxthon is written you may get all the new stuff by proxy..

In the long run the fixes will be good for all no matter what browser you use.

"Except with major security leaps, CSS fixes, transparent PNG rendering, AND tabbed browsing with a unique Quick Tabs feature, but hey..you're the expert."

There is nothing unique in the IE 7 quick tabs feature. OmniWeb has been proposing this kind of features since a least 1 year, and Shiira has also been proposing it for months (it uses an Expose like implemetation). Moreover Omniweb implemenattion is more powerful as it allows actions on the tabs, create new tabs by dragging the desired links to the drawer (quite powerful staff here), you can view the opened tabs as graphics or only the tab titles, etc......

So it took them this long to deliver those relatively minor features? Not to mention Firefox has supported transparent PNG rendering and tabbed browsing all along; and it's done CSS closer to standard and security is excellent. Here we are watching Microsoft do what they've always done: catch up.

IE Manager: Alright I've got a list of the features in Firefox that IE6 doesn't have. [peruses list]. Looks good, okay send this to the programmers and call it IE7.

Intern: But, won't most people be unable to notice these changes?

IE Manager: You're right. Get the UI people onboard too.

But really, isn't IE7 compared to IE6 just like comparing Windows XP to Vista: a few new interesting features which might attract technical users and a whole boatload of graphical improvements which will attract non-technical people (but also make it run on 0.5% of the hardware Windows XP does? /number exaggerated).

I think this could easily be seen as the first anti-competitive action in the New Browser Wars. It should be blatantly obvious that they are trying to bring Firefox users back to IE with a new version which ALL windows users will have, regardless of their browser preference. It's hard enough getting IE6 to let go of being the default browser (some apps actually call iexplore.exe directly) when you install Windows and of course good ole Firefox. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if IE7 will take over the default browser spot when it's installed. This would be dastardly, but that IS Microsoft for you.

But now I'm going to have to worry about a new version of IE being installed on MY computer (when I do not want it) which potentially has two-fold as many security vulnerabilities as the last one. They are STILL fixing the exploits that resulted from the last team of crack(pot) programmers that updated IE. I think that's one reason why IE6 lasted so long without a major update, including of course the fact that IE won almost all of the browser market and thus their was no _need_ for improvement in the browser because Microsoft did not need to win. This whole situation makes me sick.

While MSIE6 got loads of bugs, it's pretty sure that the new version will have its own quirks. Thus, putting a point zero release as an high priority update, when it can break existing systems, is not the wisest idea...

Furthermore, the UI changed quite radically. Computer neophytes might require a retraining, which is a waste of time. Talking of UI, the XP version of MSIE7 looks quite similar to the one coming with Windows Vista. Perhaps they are pushing it as high priority for hyping Vista?

Furthermore, the UI changed quite radically. Computer neophytes might require a retraining, which is a waste of time. Talking of UI, the XP version of MSIE7 looks quite similar to the one coming with Windows Vista. Perhaps they are pushing it as high priority for hyping Vista? --Wrawrat

Is there anyone here who doesn't think this is merely an attempt to hook people on the Vista interface by forcing an half-assed implementation on their users?

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Astroturfers can put their hands down now. Anyone else? I didn't think so.

What really bothers me about this situation is the precedent this sets. I seem to recall the last time Microsoft forced a browser down everyone's throats, it also came with a shell upgrade and was suddenly a mandatory component in everything from video players to virus scanners to defragmenters...

Given that Microsoft has already made it quite clear it plans to beta test various Vista components in limited implementation on Windows XP what's to stop them from pushing various other 'features' on people who don't want or need them?

I seem to recall how Windows Media Player was also pushed in this fashion. Am I truly the only one whose gotten tired of these types of things? Surely everyone recalls how well bundling the web browser into the system level of NT has worked over the years? The massive explosion of worms and scumware which has gotten so bad even Microsoft's best response is to do a fresh install? The wonderful Alexia spyware bundled into the system at install time as well as the WGA bait and switch?

I'm certain to be modded down as flamebait or a troll by various Microsoft apologist for saying this, but it needs to be said.

As a Linux user at home, this has no effect on my own desktop and laptop. I'll never use IE7 as my everyday browser. But, at least now the computers I frequently have to use, but can't install software on (as in, at work, my friends computers, and computers in labs around my campus) will have a browser on it that isn't archaic.

And I've noticed firefox has a silent 'update' feature. I don't know what the big deal is here. Why run an out dated version of the browser when the OS will install the new one and "shove it down your throat"?

If you love clicking on checkboxes and dealing with warning pop up box...IE 7 is a big Christmas gift for you.

Really? Because every FireFox update I got came as a notice somewhere around the throbber (that thingy that animates as pages load) which I had to click on to be prompted to update. This is without using any special extensions by the way. If you've ran into a quiet updater I'd like to know about it.

Actually I just got an update saying that Firefox needs to be restarted to install an update. Not entirely silent but I certainly wasn't made aware that a new update was available and given the option to download it as it was already there.

Perhaps there's an option, I didn't check. I really don't care. Keep it in mind that Windows also has the option to download and install automatically or be prompted at each step.

I think the key point here is that both give you an option to download. I certainly didn't install WGA onto my computer as I used my option not to.

I don't really think that IE7 is fast or convenient compared to Firefox. Rendering speed is okay, but the tabs implementation is not quite as nice as firefox's (the new tabs take too long to appear and give wierd visual feedback).

There are gestures for IE7, but I've just gotten used to those in Firefox. I still use IE when I want speed to get on and get off. But for longer, more sustained browsing, it's Firefox for me.

"Except with major security leaps, CSS fixes, transparent PNG rendering, AND tabbed browsing with a unique Quick Tabs feature, but hey..you're the expert."

Yes, I'm an expert in Microsoft software. I've suffered their crap for long long time.

BTW, most people don't care about security, or they would be using anything but Windows. PNG transparency is well supported by major browser (except IE) since I don't remember how many years. Other things you mention are part of the new interface, and that's what most people will like. Proves my point.

I'm not sure sure about that. One of the biggest reason people apparently turn to Firefox is because they're sick of (or paranoid about) the vulnerabilities in IE. This includes me.

I've been using the new IE7 beta since it was released a few weeks ago and it is definately impressive. It's much better than IE6. I'm not entirely sold just yet and continue to move between IE7b3 and Firefox for the time being, but if IE7 can take away the apparent security threat, then I will more than likely migrate back to IE.

Where possible I try to keep my system as lean as possible so if there's no reason for me to keep Firefox thanks to a newer version of IE then I'll likely do that.

As for the usage of Windows as justification for people not being concerned about security, I cannot agree. People use Windows for a number of reasons including it is far easier than Linux, has a much wider range of applicaitons that are supported by a formal structure, hardware compaibility, their friends use it so they can share their experiences / problems and others.

This arguement about being locked into some proprietory system is a fass to me. Apple are the Jedi of locking folks down, not Microsoft.

What's lean about eliminating ~18 MB of program files? That's all Firefox takes.

I suggest you try out features like gestures and Quick Bookmarks (keywords). Gestures are of slightly questionable utility until you get really used to them. But Quick Bookmarks are just great! I type CTRL+L to get to the address bar and "gg some search terms" to do a quick google search. Or "wp Criticisms of Microsoft" for a quick wikipedia search. Or even "fe" or "ef" and some word to go from french to english or vice-versa. IE doesn't have this feature yet and it's the main reason I use Firefox when I'm planning to browse rather than go to a specific site.

The second best firefox feature is find-as-you-type, which was turned off by default in later builds. It can be enabled by going to about:config with the location bar and changing one of the options under Accessiblity. This is by far the best way to find things in long webpages.

"But Quick Bookmarks are just great! I type CTRL+L to get to the address bar and "gg some search terms" to do a quick google search. Or "wp Criticisms of Microsoft" for a quick wikipedia search. Or even "fe" or "ef" and some word to go from french to english or vice-versa. IE doesn't have this feature yet and it's the main reason I use Firefox when I'm planning to browse rather than go to a specific site."

I just found an email I sent on June 27, 2000 to some people, showing how to use the IE 5.0 Web Accessories' Quick Search to do exactly that. For instance, I set up "au" to do author searches against our library catalog, and "su" to do a subject search, etc.,.

Because Microsoft has never lied about these types of things before....right?

Sure, I'll take their word for it--nothing harmful here, just like with WGA, WMP and oh lookee here, IE itself! Try to understand if most of us who have used Microsoft for awhile tend to take such things with a grain of salt, the burnt child tending to be skittish around fire and all..

I think I've mentioned this by mail, or perhaps I completely forgot, but with some comments I don't appear in the "Replies" next to the heart icon. I see that happens to others too. I'm using Konqueror, btw, so that could be the problem...

Hmm...well that will be swell for those here at the ASU campus (where I am currently for the summer: Arizona State University Polytechnic Campus). They use a Cisco VPN client ("Clean Access") for Windows boxes. I've tried the IE 7 Beta out, hoping to write an review article on it. I haven't been able to get too far. IE 7 is incompatible with Cisco Clean Access. Unless Microsoft has fixed that, there are going to be a lot of business customers pissed off when they find IE 7 creating problems with their VPN clients since many businesses use Cisco VPN products.

Avid MS-hater speaking: IE7 seems like the best software Microsoft has released in a long, long time. It's like they suddenly realized that if they try really, really hard and spend a crap ton of money, they can overcome the demons of crushing complexity and still produce decent software.

IE7 will stem the tide of alternative browser growth. It's always been true that Microsoft will destroy their competition so long as they release halfway decent software. They just haven't done this for IE in almost a decade, and so the competition was finally starting to succeed. The honeymoon of Firefox on Windows is about to be over. The future growth of Firefox and Opera now rests with the fate of the free software desktop.

However, this release strategy could crash the entire party for MS. Whenever you massively overhaul libraries, frameworks, and platforms, there's a really high change of screwing things up big time for your users, no matter how well you test. The number of homebrew corporate applications written for IE is staggering, and MS must hope that reports of disruptive breakage are few and quiet.

It wouldn't necessarily be Microsoft's fault if there are breaks in backwards compatibility. Some of those web applications suck so bad that they're just begging to be broken. However, these are the same users who are likely to be broadsided by this "high-priority update" release strategy.

Finally MS releases a good piece of software, and they don't have the confidence to let users elect to upgrade (for free) on their on timetable. I know admins can block updates and that users can deselect upgrades, but the WGA Notifications hoopla proved that many users aren't so careful. Why is MS being so reckless with this business-critical release?

Who trusts MS to make a good browser? I surelly don't! Let me guess, they will again ignore standards, create their own 'standards', convince us that ActiveX is really important, restrict access to MS contents (like Hotmail and WinUpdate) if you don't use their latest browser and force you to install it and set it as default even if you don't feel you need it. I bet 'thomas' will love it. I would recommend you guys to keep Firefox, Opera and such.

Oh, I see. My post was modded down because it was critical of Microsoft's track record in developing a quality browser and of their release strategy, but I admitted that IE7 is an impressive product nonetheless. You really laid into them on all accounts, didn't say anything about IE7 in particular, and got modded up generously.

I should really pick sides before I post. "Fair and balanced" doesn't work any better for me than it does for Fox News.

"So you're insisting that since your pet browser is inferior to IE7, Microsoft should be stopped from providing IE7 to users?"

Which pet browser? Firefox? It is superior to IE7. In everything: security, standards support, openness, platform availability, browsing speed, features, cool-factor. What? Don't you realize Firefox has taken a lot of IE's market and still does? IE7 is just a countermeassure.

I suspect there wouldn't have been an IE 7 were it not for FireFox. FireFox was becomming a noticable threat to Microsoft's IE mindshare, so they got back into action. Were it not for FireFox we'd be waiting for Opera to scare Microsoft, and Opera might not have become freeware which would have made that even harder to accomplish.

It's a bad idea to support IE which is only developed when a competitor takes away enough mindshare to scare Microsoft. Here's to hoping MS doesn't get much of a boost from IE 7, maybe then we'll see some continued effort and an IE 8.

See we use Siebel. An old version, but before you say upgrade, can you spare us a few million? Yeah thought not. So anyways It uses Microsoft Java & IE 5.5sp2. So if you load SUN java it doesnt work. If you load IE 6 it sort of works, but the newer patches cause it to break. Now here we go with a pushed update that is going to tottaly screw up our siebel install.

Thanks Eolas & Microsoft for putting us in a fantastic situation. I know its all about IP & Lawsuits, never the end users.

See we use Siebel. An old version, but before you say upgrade, can you spare us a few million? Yeah thought not. So anyways It uses Microsoft Java & IE 5.5sp2. So if you load SUN java it doesnt work. If you load IE 6 it sort of works, but the newer patches cause it to break. Now here we go with a pushed update that is going to tottaly screw up our siebel install.

You can always choose to block the update:
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The Internet Explorer 7 Blocker Toolkit enables IT Administrators to disable automatic delivery of Internet Explorer 7 as a high-priority update via Automatic Updates and the Windows Update and Microsoft Update sites.

The worst of it is that we have a lot of 3rd party interaction & we have a lot of machines that are not part of a domain. Heck how our users manage to login is a minor miracle. Esp that they are constantly upgrading IE & java and breaking this thing. I'm seriously thinking about some kind of virtualization solution for this. But this will conviently require more Microsoft licenses.....

Looking at the statistics, one has to remember, when thinking about those numbers, around 10-15% of people are deemed to be running 'alternative platforms', so you'll find that a large portion of people who are running Firefox, are running alternative operating systems, and are more than likely going to be the 'early upgraders' than just end user.

As for Joe end user, and how this whole IE 7 thing falls into place, one must remember that there are end uses who are still running Windows XP without service packs of patches, there are end users who have never installed an updated version of internet explorer; its very doubtful that Microsoft will have the same speed of upgrading unless they start also pushing internet explorer as a slip stream into OEM Windows XP copies to get it on the desktop and ISPS issueing their new 'customised browsing experience'.

I suppose you all have read this page, what do you think about it ? I have to say that even when it is clear that the author is a pro-IE and anti-Firefox gui himself, I have to agree with several of the myths.

Don't trust this webpage. Its author is royally a troll whose purpose is to generate revenues by visiting this page. He was caught using multiple nicknames on different websites including Anadtech promoting that page and deliberately misquoting developers including IE so he was banned.

That page was already posted five months ago and was debunked. It is not worth a read even for IE fans.

Tell that to my brother, he got angry because the option to change the page layout to landscape in OpenOffice.org wasn't done the same way as in MS Office. And that guy studied trade engineering (don't ask me why they call themselves engineers) so he's not supposed to be a retard either.

The nice thing about Firefox, Opera, etc on Windows is that you can still use IE6 if you really have to. Now it seems unlikely that IE7 will co-exist with IE6, but will replace it. And may not be uninstallable either.

So any estimates on the size of the problem of broken web servers that only run on IE6? Not just on the Internet, but in embedded devices and applications and company intranets? Yes, they should be fixed, but some just won't in time, if ever.

Will the MS fanboys please stop talking about things like PNG support, CSS fixes, tabbed browsing, "better" security, and a less fugly interface as if they are awesome new features? Everyones besides Microsoft has had them for years...

The idea that people are going to magically flock to IE7 because it doesn't suck AS MUCH is laughable. Certainly, it will slow Firefox's growth, but that hardly makes it a better browser and it's hardly going to cause most Firefox users to switch. At worst we'll get rid of the Microsoft apologists who only use Firefox "for the time being while Bill finishes our awesome new version of IE for us."

I'm sick of people accepting the idea that something has to be 1000x better than something else for people to dare to switch to it. Switching web browsers is FREE and EASY. All of the media outlets that think Firefox users are going to switch to IE because IE7 is closer to Firefox are in for a big surprise. There is no need for Mozilla to suddenly throw a million new features into Firefox to combat IE7 because Firefox is already a better browser than IE7. It sucks that Microsoft finally got off its lazy ass and decided it wants to keep most of its market share, but it's not the end of the world.

Firefox plug-ins provide virtually anything you could want. Feature bloat is not what Firefox needs, if anything, they need to ramp up the switch to FF campaign again.

Worst case, even if IE does get better than FF someday you can trust in one organization to screw things up: Microsoft. As soon as they get all the market share again (if that ever happens again, I doubt it will unless all FF developers die) they'll do the exact same thing again (ok, maybe not quite that bad, but similar). Even with IE7 they've been extremely reluctant to do what needs to be done. They're still so far from any real standards compliance it's laughable (farther than FF). I'm certain the new code is full of holes and it will cause plenty of bugs and security problems.

As for the automatic push, it sucks for low end users but I agree with the move. I'm sick of people telling me my several-years-old standard image format "doesn't work" just because they're not smart enough to realize IE is a web browser that can easily be replaced with much better programs, you know, the kind that pay a *little* attention to silly things like standards.

I seriously doubt IE is going to ever be more secure than FF except by annoyance. The only way Microsoft seems capable of enforcing security is to restrict priveleges so much and put in so many annoying steps that anyone who runs into one of their security holes can simply be faulted for not knowing what they're doing, when in fact they're just trying to use the software normally without ridiculous restrictions.

I think that the reason people are pointing out that IE7 has PNG support, CSS improvements, tabbed browsing, UI improvements, etc is precisely because these features have long been missing -- and possibly also because people who tend to badmouth IE seem to suggest sometimes that it doesn't have any new and worthwhile features. As for whether it's a better browser, it doesn't have to be better. It simply has to achieve relative parity in order for the majority of people to keep using it and not install/use Firefox. I have the IE7 Beta installed on my machine, and I must say that MS has done a pretty good job.

IE7 will definitely be more secure on Vista, as it sandboxes everything that the user does, including running with reduced privileges, restricting where the user can read/write files, and locking down the registry. Even if a buffer overflow occurs, malware won't be able to install itself.

My god read your own text! "Pretty good"? Firefox isn't about being 1000x better than IE, though that's certainly how it got to where it is today. It's about changing people's attitudes - providing an alternative to Microsoft's crappy defaultware.

To be honest, it doesn't really matter to me how many people use Firefox. Its very existence is forcing Microsoft to waste money patching their shitty software because Microsoft does care about market share. Those costs help its comepetitors, slightly increading the chance that it can lose market share or stop trying to invade / control every market.

That's really wierd because I just dropped Opera (9) on my powerbook for Firefox. I love Opera's interface and features, but it was just too damned slow. Firefox really works quickly, which ultimately won out over its (IMHO) inferior UI.